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Early Childhood Years
Being young, literacy was always around me. Every night my mother would read, "Goodnight Moon". I would constantly hear my family members communicating with one another. -
Early Days
My mother and I would finger paint letters and numbers. I finger painted the numbers one through ten. By the time I attended kindergarten, I knew how to write the numbers one through ten. I also practiced spelling my first name through finger painting. I always had a difficult time writing the letter “S”. -
Kindergarten
A memory that I can remember was singing the alphabet. As my kindergarten class sang the alphabet, we were given Play-Doh. I made letters out of Play-Doh, but I demonstrated difficulty with forming the letters. -
Speech
At four years old I was attending speech therapy. During each therapy session, the therapist would practice on the pronunciation of sounds. I had a difficult time communicating and pronouncing sounds such as ch, th, and ph. We pronounced words that contained those sounds. -
Elementary Years
Every week, I was given sight words in a composition book. I had to memorize the sight words that were in the book each week. Every week there was a new set of sight words. This frustrated me because I had a difficulty pronouncing and remembering the sight words. -
Middle School
My younger sister has Down syndrome. I always loved reading to others. My sister had a difficult time reading text. Every day, I would sit down after school and read to my sister. As I would read, I would point to the words so that my sister could visually see every word I read. After I finished the story, I would point to the words and make her repeat the pointed word. -
High School
My freshman and sophomore year I was a cheerleader at Notre Dame High School. My cheerleading team had weekly practices. During practices, my team would learn cheers for football and basketball games. Besides cheering at football and basketball games, my team participated in monthly competitions against other high school cheerleading teams. We had additional practices for learning the choreography for competitions. -
College
Joining Greek life at Illinois State University, I am required to attend recruitment practice. During each practice, I learned new songs for the door and the different rounds. Each round, we sing different songs at our door. After recruitment practice each day, I would go home and practice memorizing each song. Besides learning the ritual and door songs, we would participate in conversation workshops. These workshops were designed to go over the topics we can discuss. -
College Years
I am a gymnastics peer coach for Special Olympics. I teach the athletes their gymnastics routines for each event. Each routine has a set of required skills. I practice the skills with the athletes. Another job I have as a peer coach is communicating with the athlete’s parents. I converse with the parents about the child’s progress, competitions, and practices. I try to keep the parents informed by talking to them weekly.
